This is Spiritual Work

Spir·it·u·al.       Adjective
1. relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

In the amount of time since we have last written, we’ve worked with leaders confronting massive staffing shortages, petitions, call-outs, contact-tracing nightmares, and countless sick students and staff – all while juggling their own family illnesses, disruptions to child care, lack of sleep, etc.  

These aren’t just "challenges."  They can crush the spirit.  And they push leaders not only to the brink of their physical endurance, but to places of anger, defensiveness, judgment and despair.  The pressure and the criticism can hurt on levels that we don’t always allow ourselves to consciously feel as we channel our best "superhuman" to plow forward.

What is the path back to our spirit?  Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn and activist bell hooks spent their lives helping us answer that question, and both passed away in that same short time period since we last reached out.  We’ve benefited from both of their voices in our intensives and their guidance has been on my mind.

Bell taught us that the path back home doesn’t mean we turn away from our suffering. As she described in her book All About Love, the first step to interrupting the survival-mode "autopilot" is to get more deeply aware of what we’re actually experiencing.  

So many people turn to spiritual thinking hoping that the sorrow or pain will just miraculously disappear. Usually, they find that the place of suffering-the place where we are broken in spirit, when accepted and embraced, is also a place of peace and possibility. Our sufferings do not magically end; they become the abundant waste that we use to make new growth possible.

Doing that work requires time and space. Over the last couple of weeks there is a slight increase in optimism and relief that we’ve seen from leaders that are now in the tail-end of the Omicron wave.  There is a sense of looming spring, preparations for the next year, and some brief opportunity to take a break, down the road.  

But we need more than a break. Catching up on sleep or sitting on a beach might be a type of medicine– but it won’t fully address the toll on the spirit or replenish us in the ways we most yearn for.  Most "breaks" become a distant memory when we return to work and the challenges of the next year present themselves. In this way, those escapes can even unintentionally fuel the survival / autopilot part of us.  As Thich Naht Hahn wrote in his book Being Peace:

We are so busy we hardly have time to look at ourselves. Society is organized in a way that even when we have some leisure time, we don't know how to use it to get back in touch with ourselves. We act as if we don't like ourselves and are trying to escape from ourselves.

We deserve the opportunity to come home to ourselves … to the childlike sense of joy, wonder, and peace that might feel so incredibly far away at this point.  We know how impossible it might feel to find the path back to that place.  Especially because any time "off" for many leaders who are parents – particularly in education – will simply mean they are momentarily putting aside the role of leader to hold the role of parent, partner, family member since their kids won’t be in school.  

Finding the space to tend to our spirits will obviously look different for different people.  But we invite people to think about this as core to your work as a leader.  It’s not something that has to happen in your time "off."  Making time to reconnect to the deepest part of yourself will profoundly impact how you show up for the people you lead and love.  It’s not separate from your job.

Finding the space.  Our focus this spring is creating that space for leaders to rejuvenate without escaping themselves, tend to their emotional and physical wellness, and explore a different way of being – all while immediately applying it to a fictional work setting that our professional actors bring to life.  We invite you into that space with us –  in-person or virtually – but whether you find that space with us, with someone else, or on your own – we implore people to think of this work as core to your role and something you deeply deserve.